If Tweets Were Goals in the Stanley Cup Playoffs

Fans of the Pittsburgh Penguins seem to be the loudest of the 16 teams in the NHL Playoffs on Twitter. Thanks to Twitter's blog for this awesome information!

The NHL Wants To See YOUR Playoff Story

April 16 starts the 2014 NHL Playoffs. And this year the NHL wants you to share your playoff experience no matter where you are. Are you at home? At the bar? In the building watching the game? No matter where you experience the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs, the NHL wants to see it with #MyPlayoffsStory. Go ahead and share if you're watching!


Unfortunately for me, the 2014 NHL Playoffs mark the fifth year in a row that the Carolina Hurricanes have missed the after show. I have no dog in the hunt, so I just get to sit back and relax during games even though I would prefer spending my afternoons stressing about the Staal brothers and our starting goaltender. Hopefully next season will be our year (one can only hope).

The Most Famous Fútbol in the World

Meet Brazuca: An Adidas soccer ball with six cameras that is starting it's journey in Brazil and traveling the world in anticipation of the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The ball that took 2.5 years to develop will be the official game ball for this year's tournament.

Want to see where Brazuca is on a daily basis? No problem, because the soccer ball has it's own Twitter account, with 120,000 loyal followers already (myself included). And when you follow it, you may even get a laugh from the tweets it produces.

 

Brazuca also just made it's first stop on the world tour... in Spain! It practiced with the Spanish National Team in preparation for the big games this summer as well as a School of Fútbol where children learn to play the game.

Photo courtesy of Around The World: Spain

It's next stop is Germany, so follow Brazuca on Twitter to see the adventures from all over the globe!

Photo courtesy of @brazuca

Look How Far We've Come

Over the past few weeks, a site letting you see user's first tweets has become very popular, and fun for that matter. I thought it could be fun to see what the four major sports leagues sent out as their first tweet. I don't think one is worse than the other, but I do not think any of them are great.

The MLB was the first to jump on board:

I guess they forgot the standard rule of capitalization? I also enjoy the fact that they explain how to shorten links. Why would the public need this from the MLB? This seems like an email from the supervisor of the person running the account...

Next was the NBA:

What does this even mean? Can anyone tell me? My best guess is something to do with the NBA All-Star game that took place on February 15, 2009. But your guess is as good as mine.

Third was the NFL:

Hey, thanks for the welcome... Oh wait. I wonder how many questions they received from posting their first tweet ever asking for submissions less than 90 minutes away from a chat. Couldn't they have planned a little bit better?

And last, but not least, the NHL:

I can only imagine what they tweeted next. The Stanley Cup had been won 10 days earlier by the Pittsburgh Penguins, so maybe it was about the Cup trip? Or about the draft? I think I'm giving the NHL too much credit; it was probably just a link to NHL.com... 

Thankfully, we have come a long way in the world of Twitter!

Reds Score Big on Social Media on #OpeningDay

On one of Baseball's biggest days of the year, the Cincinnati Reds unveiled a new area to their concourse, a social media zone. When you step into the Reds Connect Zone you are placed in front of 25 screens featuring online reactions to the game, pictures of people watching from home or in the stands, and in game promotional polls and contest.

Photo courtesy of @FOXSportsLive on Twitter

Throughout a game, the screens will feature Tweets, Instagrams, and Vines from Reds fans along with other majors players, like the MLB or ESPN. Free wifi is offered in the zone as well as phone charging stations (a major plus for someone like me who drains their battery at sporting events).

If I were working with a team in any of the major leagues, I would start working on getting a social media zone ASAP.

Twitter Saves My Night

Last Monday, March 10, we had a very scary moment in the NHL. Rich Peverly, who has a known heart condition, collapsed on the bench during his game against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Here is the video, but you can't see much:

Fans and teams across the league expressed their concern for Peverly with tweets and posts right after it happened. For a few minutes fans sat in front of theirs television sets wondering what happened and how Peverly was. I refreshed my twitter feed every few seconds waiting for news to come out and thanks to Twitter I didn't have to wait long.

These tweets from the Dallas Stars started rolling out within minutes:

Thank you Twitter for keeping me updated. And I wish Pevs the best of luck during his recovery this season!

The New Age of Olympic Love

A new dating application called Tinder has seemed to change the dating game for olympic athletes living in the olympic village in Sochi. This was the first time the simple "hot or not" app has been around during the olympics and it created quite a buzz between athletes.

Tinder takes your location and finds all potential matches within a certain radius of yourself. Then the scrolling begins. A person comes up on your phone and if you swipe to the left, it's a no. If you swipe to the right, it's a yes. Say someone also swiped to the right for you, then you will instantly get a notification that you're a match, taking you to a private message to start a conversation if you wish.

Olympic skiing heartthrobs Nick Goepper and Joss Christensen have even admitted being on the app, "It's the normal crew we're used to seeing," said Christensen. "It's all the American's we're used to traveling with, so it's a little weird." Christensen doesn't go much further on Tinder then swiping. He has hasn't initiated a conversation with any other olympic athletes.

Left: Nick Goepper         Right: Joss Christensen

Photo courtesy of @nickgoepper on Instagram

Want to know if your favorite athlete is on Tinder? Well there is a Tumblr page for that! Sochi on Tumblr has Tinder profiles of many different athletes that competed in Sochi over the past two weeks.


Why is Nick Goepper even on Tinder? He has a thousands of girls trying to win a date with him after the conclusion of the Olympics! Using the hashtag #iwanttodatenick on Twitter and Instagram will enter you into the competition. Funny pictures and videos have seen to be catching his attention.

Pictures like this:

But, this girl seems to be the front runner. I mean, she WROTE and SANG him a song!

Now that the Olympics are over, I hope the Olympians got all their Tindering in! I know New Zealand snowboarder Rebecca Possum Torr did...

#BellLetsTalk Goes Viral

On January 28, 2014 a hashtag started making waves on Twitter with everyone from celebrities to athletes to politicians chiming in. That hashtag was #BellLetsTalk. Bell Let's Talk is a Mental Health Initiative started by Bell Canada Enterprise (BCE), the largest communications company in Canada. It encourages people to raise awareness for mental health and end the negative stigma associated with those words.

For every tweet, retweet, and mention of #BellLetsTalk, BCE pledged to donate $.05 to mental health related charities.

It started with Canadian based companies, groups, and people using the hashtag:

   

But quickly athletes, writers, and teams from the NHL started to pick up on the trend and join the conversation about mental health:

 

In the offseason of 2011, the NHL lost three players to mental illness: Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien, and Wade Belak. Campaigns like Bell Lets Talk create dialogue about the issues these hockey players faced and that many members of the general population face today. The hockey community rallied around this cause like it was their own, spreading positive messages about mental health all day. 

They even garnered the support from a few celebrities: 

It is always amazing to see a sport come together in support of something other than the game. It shows that the athletes who get paid millions of dollars to play a sport have other things on their mind than the competition. Over $5.4 million was raised on January 28, 2014 because of tweets and posts on Twitter and Facebook. And people still say the hockey community is small?

If you'd like more information visit the Bell Lets Talk website!